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Wednesday, September 28, 2005

 

It can be argued that any view is correct.

This gives us a lot of scope - that any view sufficiently supported makes for gripping reading and good adsense results. I could for trolling perposes state and prove that assasination was a good business model. Or I could talk about politics, however, to examine this idea further I'm going to pick an easy topic and talk about softwear patents.

Software patents and patents on computer-implemented inventions (CII) are a class of patents and one of many legal aspects of computing. There is intense debate as to what extent such patents should be granted.

(WIKIPEDIA QUOTE)

It is considered that there are three interested parties in the software patent games. Thug companies that only file patents and sue (they exist it's all true I tell you), the defensive legal departments and laywers well placed to get rich in the middle.

"It gives cause for serious concern that there is a noticeable trend toward the industrialization of patent profiteering. With Acacia and Forgent, the world now has two publicly traded companies, each of them with tens of millions of Euros in the bank, that generate the bulk of their revenues by enforcing patents. Acacia does nothing other than acquiring and commercializing patents. Forgent actually has a small software publishing business, but 90% of its revenues come from patent enforcement. Forgent's primary patent relates to a technique that is used in connection with the JPG graphics file format." --No Software Patents

Traditionally software has been protected by the copyright laws but in recent years there has been an increasing move toward the leverage of an ill prepared law system driven only by the desire to create more money in ones own account.

"The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office historically has been reluctant to grant patents on inventions relating to computer software. In the 1970s, the P.T.O. avoided granting any patent if the invention utilized a calculation made by a computer. Their rationale was that patents could only be granted to processes, machines, articles of manufacture, and compositions of matter. Patents could not be granted to scientific truths or mathematical expressions of it. The P.T.O. viewed computer programs and inventions containing or relating to computer programs as mere mathematical algorithms, and not processes or machines." -- Bit Law

However the opposite is also easy to talk from. For example http://www.spi.org/ is a site apparently offering support of software patents but of course you must pay for all this and there is no promise as to what you will get other than membership of a group with some big names... so I will move on to the next source of quoatable material.

In the EU software patents were deemed 2wrong" however the pressure of companies that feel thier bottom line might be challenged has produced an interesting state of affairs.

"While the EU Parliament has proposed a clear exclusion of software patents, the Commission and Council have ignored the Parliament's proposal and reinstated the most uncompromisingly pro-patent text in May 2004. However this text does not enjoy the support of a qualified majority of member states. Yet the Council has refused to renegotiate and is still trying to push the text through. Meanwhile the European Parliament has asked for a restart of the procedure. The Council and Commission still seem inclined to ignore the Parliament's request and to interpret the EU's rules of procedure in an anti-democratic spirit." --Software Patents vs Parliamentary Democracy

But for the main part it is not so much that it is good for business to file patents but that it is bad for business not to file patents. Most big companies have agreements with each other not to sue, this is just becuase they are as fearfull of ising a patented idea.

So even microsoft have no idea if the software they produce is counter to a patent how can a small scale programmer hope to know?

Patenting software has become popular. This is difficult to quantify but as an indication as of January 2005 Microsoft alone has 6,130 issued patents which are presumably mainly software patents (US PTO Search). Microsoft expects to file 3,000 new applications this year. IBM received 3,415 patents in 2003 but many of these do not relate to software.

Most large software companies have cross-licencing agreements in which each agrees not to sue the other over patent infringements. For example, Microsoft has agreements with IBM, Sun Microsystems, SAP, Hewlett-Packard, Siemens AG, Cisco and recently Autodesk (IDG News Service). Interestingly Microsoft agreed to share with Sun even though they are a direct competitor and with AutoDesk even though they have far fewer patents than Microsoft. It appears that large companies would prefer to avoid expensive and uncertain litigation rather than assert their own intellectual property rights. Indeed, being able to negotiate such agreements is a major reason that companies file "defensive" patents.

(WIKIPEDIA QUOTE)

So there we have it - a house of cards set to fall down on us all and every one scabbling to grab the biggest share of the pie.


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